Marked
by beautyqueenforbes
Summary: When a strange mark depicting a cluster of birds appears on his chest, Klaus knows then and there that, against all odds, his mate has come into the world. Eighteen years later, he finds her, Caroline Forbes, bearing a mark to match his own on her wrist. And whether they like or not, fate intends for them to belong to one another, however long it takes. Mates!KC AU.


**Special thanks to klarolineforevermine, for her idea being the inspiration behind this fic, and to willowolven, for being a wonderful beta.**

 **Also, reviews, comments, questions, criticism—I would appreciate any of that so, so much. You can find me on Tumblr at beautyqueenforbes. Enjoy!**

* * *

 _October 10, 1992_

 _Always and forever._

That infamous oath haunted Klaus in every waking moment. Elijah had long since abandoned him and truth be told, too much time had passed for Klaus to remember exactly what particularly trivial infraction had finally pushed his noblest sibling over the edge. The maddening silence that came with the gaping wound left by his brother's absence almost drove him to wake Rebekah, if only to hear her breath.

But that wasn't an option.

Rebekah, too, would abandon him. If it wasn't when he woke her, it would be soon after. They all would, in time; the daggers were Klaus' only assured safeguard against that threat. So, instead, he filled the quiet with screams and desperate pleas to be spared. Were Klaus a better man he would compel his victims to feel no pain as they passed, but what would be the point in proving them wrong? If that's what his own blood believed of him, then Klaus would strive to be every bit the monster they thought he was.

And, even better, he looked the part, too, as he stood before his bathroom mirror and assessed the splatters of blood along his jawline and the splotches of red on his chest that had soaked through his shirt. Klaus would be worse even when he unearthed the doppelganger and nullified the hybrid curse. He tried to find a trace of the wolf in his reflection, but just as he thought he saw something, steam from the hot shower beating against the bath behind him consumed his image.

Klaus abandoned his search and stepped into the shower, watching as the crystalline water turned to pink and the spatters of red along his flesh dripped away. The water seared his bloodied flesh until it ran tepid, branding his skin an abraded pink just a few shades darker than the pool forming at his feet. Something unfamiliar lurked in the depths of Klaus's conscience, and as history had indicated, he didn't particularly enjoy the thought of the unknown. Perhaps he was just exhausted, causing his perspective to become warped, but things felt different this time.

Bracing himself against the shower wall, he rested his forehead against the cool tile and inhaled deep breaths of the damp air to clear his head. Eventually, though, the water began to cool, and so he finally conceded to go to work scrubbing away the more obstinate blood that the shower spray had failed to wash away. He focused his attention on a few insolent marks spanning across the left side of his chest, scrubbing at them, becoming more relentless with each passing moment that the splotches remained.

Finally giving up after his skin had turned an irritated shade of red from all of his rubbing, Klaus stepped out of the shower and wiped steam from the mirror with the back of his hand. He squinted to find coherence in his slightly blurred reflection, and found a smattering of marks in the shape of birds in flight on his chest staring back at him, emerging from what appeared to be a feather on the adjacent shoulder.

No. _No._ It couldn't be. Klaus had heard rumors, but that's all they were—rumors. And even if the myths and stories had some merit to them, it couldn't have applied to him. If it would have been possible, it would have happened centuries ago. Not to mention he was, technically speaking, dead.

But all rumors tended to have some facet of truth ingrained in them, didn't they? No matter how strenuously one wanted to believe the contrary.

* * *

"I would say your flagrant drinking had finally caught up with you and you had made the classic inebriated decision to get a tattoo. But if you had, you wouldn't be so panicked, and you wouldn't have come to me."

"I am _not_ panicked," Klaus snapped, almost cracking the wood of the witch's antique desk as his hand came down upon it. She pursed her lips, his actions only having served to prove her point. Although she would have preferred if he would have shown a little more respect for her meager furnishings. He whipped around to face her again, the veins spreading beneath his eyes barely concealed. "I know you have a hand in all of your witches' comings and goings, _sweetheart_. You're going to tell me which one of them was foolish enough to go after me, lest you want yourself and your entire coven to join them with your heads on pikes."

"Is that what you think? That _my_ witches are at fault here?" It was no secret that Klaus Mikaelson had accumulated a laundry list of enemies over the centuries, particularly in witch communities. While it wouldn't be surprising for one of his many foes to take a stand against him, it would also be incredibly foolish. Nobody threatened an Original and lived.

And for that reason, the coven leader of the Yulyana witches, a group that oversaw the vast majority of the Delmarva Peninsula's supernatural community and stemmed from Native American origins with close ties to several werewolf packs, found Klaus' accusations rather offensive. It had been over a decade since he had first settled in the area, and in that span of time, the covens and the Original had maintained some semblance of peace, albeit tense.

" _Enlighten_ me then, love. If not one of yours, then who?"

She stood then, closing the space between them. Their eyes locked, her gaze a stony glare, and she jutted her chin out. It was true that he could snap her in half without breaking a sweat, but the Yulyana witches had never bowed to anyone, and that wasn't going to change now over some arrogant bastard with a bad attitude.

"Your quarrel is with nature. After one thousand years, karma has come back to bite you in the ass, Niklaus. Nature decided to level the playing field, and today, it has finally crafted a weakness to be exploited. You cannot cheat pain any longer, for it has found you, and there is nowhere you can hide."

His nostrils flared, and he stood with his fists clenched at his sides. "What weakness?" He practically hissed.

Gently, the witch eased aside the collar of Klaus' shirt, revealing a fraction of the newly spurned mark. "A mate," She breathed. "Your mate has come into this world. And worst of all, she is mortal, and can and will be destroyed."

"No. You're lying to me." He jabbed a finger into her chest, slapping her hand away from his collarbone in the process. "I am not a wolf, and may never be. I am dead, and have no use for a mate. And if I were to have one, they would've popped up centuries ago. It's impossible."

"Is it?"

"Tell me where to find my mate. I won't have this. I'll destroy it."

"You'll find her, not it, in time, Niklaus. And when you do, you won't be able to kill her."

"You underestimate me. I'll kill her; I will. How will I know?"

The witch stepped away from him, her eyes gleaming with disgust. Regardless, she pressed on. "You will feel the pull. You'll know. And the girl will share your mark."

"I need a locator spell, witch."

"I won't do it." She shook her head slowly, backing ever farther away. "I won't facilitate this repulsive quest of yours."

"You won't, will you?" When she assented to the fact again, Klaus surged forward, seizing her neck in his vicelike grip. "I'll give you one more chance," He breathed, shoving her harshly up against the wall. "And then, I will hunt the rest of your coven down, one by one, as their magic seeps out of them with the life of their matriarch."

"I can't," She gasped. "I can't do a locator spell…without…"

He didn't allow her to finish.

"Then I'll find someone who can."

"Best of luck, bastard," She choked out, just as his fingers twisted, and he ripped tendons from bones and muscle, and her severed head fell to the ground with a putrid squishing noise.

* * *

 _October 4, 2010_

It was eighteen years later, almost two decades, and the witch had been wrong. For a year and a half, Klaus had searched tirelessly for the creature nature intended to be his mate, but to no avail. And so, he surmised that it had indeed been a witch who had marked him, intending to torture him with the idea that some sort of weakness had been brought into the world, and ultimately, he or she had failed.

The spell had not been all that had failed in the past several years, though. Just recently, Klaus had scoured out another doppelganger, a dull little thing named Elena, and he had used her to break the Hybrid Curse once and for all. And with the wolf that had been locked up inside finally unleashed, Klaus was one to attest to the fact that the grass really was greener on the other side.

And now, the doppelganger was proving her use yet again. Her blood was the key to constructing his hybrid army, and fortunately, she had not perished when he had sacrificed her to break the curse as he had thought.

Feeling as if he had finally found his true self, and with his family undaggered and relatively reunited, for the first time in centuries, Klaus was verging on some semblance of happiness.

He strolled into one of the science classrooms, pleased to see his sister with one of his future hybrids, Tyler Lockwood, and a particularly delectable blonde that he had almost sacrificed.

"Well?" Rebekah seemed antsy, leaning towards him from her perch on one of the lab tables.

"Well, the doppelganger _should_ be dead," he informed her, much to Rebekah's glee. She had been itching to get her hands around Elena's throat ever since she had learned of how close she was with _her_ Stefan, and how she happened to be in possession of _her_ necklace. "But before you get excited, sister, it seems that she may be more useful to us alive than dead."

"Who bloody cares, Nik? We'll figure something else out. I want her dead."

"If I'm wrong, Bekah, you'll be first in line to dispose of her, I promise."

With absolutely no regard for the other two occupants of the room, they began to bicker on the matter.

While he spoke to Rebekah on the matter of the doppelganger and her quite versatile blood, he found his attention drifting back to the girl. There was something about her, but he couldn't quite put his finger on it.

"Fine," his sister finally huffed, making a show of pouting.

Klaus finally turned to fully assess the pair. The blonde leered at him with acid in her eyes, looking like she might spit venom on him at any moment.

And God, did she look good doing it.

She tightly clutched one of Tyler's arms, as if she could guard him from whatever was coming, or could protect him from the hybrid blood coursing through his veins. And for some reason unbeknownst to him, Klaus felt his insides twist at the sight. He didn't want her clinging to him or anybody else for that matter. He wanted them separated.

"Restrain her," he snapped at Rebekah, and the blonde's eyes widened as his sister seized her from behind.

Klaus produced the vial of Elena's doppelganger blood, presenting it to Tyler. "Drink," he ordered.

"No, Tyler! Don't! Don't do this, no!" the blonde shrieked like a banshee, struggling to no avail in Rebekah's grip.

"If he doesn't feed, he'll die anyway, love," Klaus addressed her for the first time.

"Caroline…Care, it's okay," Tyler gasped, taking the vial from Klaus with a shaking hand.

"Listen to your boyfriend," Klaus said, enunciating 'boyfriend' like the world itself disgusted him. He couldn't begin to understand why whatever affection existed between Tyler and Caroline bothered him so profoundly. He could only attribute it to some foreign wolf instinct. While he hadn't felt it before that moment, he was sure that it was simply some feral desire to bed her and promptly forget about it. It was nothing more; just his werewolf traits cropping up in him at a stunted rate. He was just looking for a warm body to get close to.

Tyler's howls of pain ripped Klaus from his reverie, and he turned to see the boy convulsing as veins grew around his golden eyes.

"I take it that's a good sign," he chucked, before dragging his gaze back to Caroline to assess her reaction.

She struggled even more fiercely with Rebekah now, lunging against the grip his sister had secured around Caroline's waist. Caroline wrenched her arm from beneath Rebekah's, grasping at air, trying in vain to get to Tyler. As she did this, the sleeve of her cardigan slipped up her arm, revealing a labyrinth of rather tempting blue veins along her pale wrist. And right at that apex, a little black spot caught his eye—a bird.

Klaus swallowed, and the world outside seemed to fall apart. It couldn't be. He had long ago written it off as impossible. It had to be just a coincidence.

He stood, the room swimming and warping before him. He had to get out of there, away from _her_.

"Nik?" Rebekah called. "Nik, where are you going? Nik? Nik!"

He couldn't focus on her exasperated calls. Something or other about how he knew she hated wolves, but he couldn't quite process the meaning behind her words. Klaus found a bathroom and slipped inside, feeling suffocated by the muggy air. He tugged the collar of his henley to the side and stared at the mark, the one that mirrored _hers_.

Klaus leaned over the sink, and started to heave.

* * *

 _October 10, 2010_

He hadn't been able to stop thinking about Caroline. He dreamt of her almost nightly. He dreamt of claiming her, of the way her blood would taste on his tongue, of the joy he would feel when he made her smile or laugh, and, worst of all, of losing her. Klaus' world had begun to revolve around her. He would begin to sketch one thing, and it would turn into a perfect blonde curl, and then that would morph into a stunning blonde with a shy smile and sparkling blue eyes.

He had to get rid of whatever it was he was feeling because it consumed him, from sunrise to sundown. And if that meant getting rid of her, so be it.

Klaus only partially listened as Tyler went on and on about whatever moral qualms he had with the latest of what Klaus had tasked him with. He merely nodded in the appropriate places, entirely uninterested. That is, until he heard, 'my girlfriend'.

His interest piqued, and an idea suddenly popped into his head.

"About your girlfriend…I'm going to need you to bite her."


End file.
